Alex Trelinski
SPAIN’S national grid operator, Red Electrica, has ruled out a cyberhack as the cause of Monday’s power blackout.
Speaking at a Tuesday news conference, Red’s operations director, Eduardo Prieto, said: “This morning we were able to conclude that there has indeed been no intrusion into Red Electrica’s control system.”
Prieto, however, did add a note of caution, stressing the data analysis was mostly of a ‘preliminary nature’, pending further details.
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“We need to have complete information on the elements that are part of the electrical grid to be able to analyse it, determine the conditions, causes, development and be able to obtain a definitive conclusion,” he added.
He also said that it is still too early to know if there was any human error.
Prieto stated that once all the details are in, he insisted that ‘necessary action will be taken to prevent a similar incident from happening again’.
Late on Monday, Red Electrica said the massive blackout was caused by a critical combination of technical factors, namely a strong oscillation in the flow of power and a ‘very significant’ loss of generation.
These two elements triggered a total collapse of the electricity system across the Iberian Peninsula.
Eduardo Prieto, confirmed that there are still ‘some consumers’ without electricity.
According to figures announced at his news conference, at 4am ‘all the substations had voltage’ and at 7.30am on Tuesday, 99% of demand had been ‘recovered’.
